Friday, August 31, 2012

News from the Network, Vol. 5, No. 35

At least as of early afternoon today, the stock market is rebounding slightly on the news from the Federal Reserve that there does not appear any need for more "quantitative easing," i.e., increasing non-productive spending to stimulate the economy to engage in even more non-productive spending. The world is saved again.

Of course, had the Federal Reserve announced another round of quantitative easing, the stock market really would have taken off in anticipation of all that lovely money being poured into the market to drive prices up. That is, we'd get an increase in government spending intended to channel massive amounts of cash to companies that will in turn channel it to the stock market because the returns are so much greater there for gambling with existing wealth than in the productive sector that provides actual marketable goods and services.

Of course, if we wanted to do something to spur a genuine sustainable economic recovery in which everyone can participate, we would need a Capital Homestead Act. To get there, here's what we've been doing over the past week:

• If you've seen the blog posting from earlier today, you already know that CESJ's latest publication, The Restoration of Property, is already available on Amazon. The Amazon web page says that it's not yet available, but it is. If you order it, the order will be sent to the distributor to be filled, not filed. To commemorate the publication, we've put together a "flyer" with two other "distributist" classics, William Thomas Thornton's A Plea for Peasant Proprietors, and William Cobbett's The Emigrant's Guide.

• Work proceeds on revising Curing World Poverty and Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen. We hope to have the revised editions available before the end of the year. Even the current editions are useful to explain the concepts and principles, if not the latest financial projections and applications.

• On Tuesday night Norman Kurland and Michael Greaney participated in the America's Party/ Independent Party's "Restore the Republic" teleconference to explain aspects of Capital Homesteading. The two and a half hour conference was lively and informative. The conference can be heard here.

• On Wednesday, Norman Kurland, Michael Greaney, and Bob and Astra Brantley from CESJ attended a conference held by the Universal Peace Federation in downtown Washington, DC. The conference looked at the root causes of the current economic crisis, discussed the principles underlying the Capital Homesteading proposal, and then examined the proper role of government.

• Dr. Robert Ornelas (D.D.), a major influence on various tribal communities throughout the United States, especially the Navajo, largely by bringing in a positive music to replace negative music. He is the America's Party and the Independent Party of California's Vice Presidential candidate for 2012. He listened in on the conference call on Tuesday, August 28, 2012, on the America's Summit/Restore the Republic conference call. After listening, he made contact with CESJ and had a conversation with Norman Kurland. He supported the idea "that [the American Independent Party] needs an economic plan." The American Independent Party represents a meta party to restore the vision of America's founders. This was a connection from Guy Stevenson in Iowa. Dr. Ornelas is also very well connected in Hollywood and the music business. He sounded very enthusiastic about what he read on the website about Capital Homesteading, and saw that it could be very good throughout the U.S. He went on to Thursday's teleconference to tell people about the potential of Capital Homesteading. We expect to meet with him in late September when he is in Washington to attend a Congressional Prayer Breakfast. Norman Kurland referred him to the website of the American Revolutionary Party.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 46 different countries and 49 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, India, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom. People in Nepal, Spain, Poland, Qatar, and the United States spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular postings this past week were "Aristotle on Private Property," "The Coming Crash," "Thomas Hobbes on Private Property," "Lies, Damned Lies, and Definitions, XXVI: The Depression," and "Is Private Property in Capital 'Catholic'?."

Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we'll see that it gets into the next "issue." If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.